Your goal is to create big Pastures with lots of Animals of the same type. In contrast to all other expansions, the Animal pawns you get are tied to a specific column of tiles you get from the central board during the draft phase at the beginning of each round.
Countryside tiles may come with two new features: barns and fences. Animal pawns must be placed not on routes, like cars, trains, and travelers, but on the barns in the fields that surround them. Fields connected to each other are called “Pastures” and are separated from each other by fences, but also by highways, railways, and towns.
Some Countryside tiles also feature blue buildings similar to Town tiles (in addition to a Barn); these are Village tiles: they count as Town tiles when building Cities, but unlike Town tiles they do not interrupt Pastures.
When you place an Animal pawn, you immediately score 1 point + 1 point for each other Animal pawn of the same type in the same Pasture, up to a maximum of 5 Prestige points.
Just like all other expansions, the Countryside Expansion comes with Objective tiles: for example, the Vineyard wants to be part of an area of at least 5 connected Field tiles with no Animal pawns, while the Hills must have at least 3 Animals around them.
—description from the publisher
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